LUKS Volume Query

Hi,

My laptop died in February, so I brought with me my SATA HDD with it, but was unable to access it until recently. Dual-boot system of Windows and Arch, with the encrypted being /dev/sda3...I went to a PC store to try to access it, a guy plugged it into a laptop, everything worked fine including password entry and access to LUKS, but software mismatch (my system was AMD and thus drivers) ended the display upon login / console.

I received a Apricorn Inc. "DriveWire" device and plugged it in... The Windows partition showed up, then I went to boot from the device, and again, all fine (the ext2 /boot partition works fine, etc.), until...

The device is not a LUKS volume and the crypto=parameter was not specified.

No prompt for the password.

I am wondering if first plugging it in to the device while in Windows (and checking the mounted Windows drive) somehow corrupted the encrypted partition /dev/mapper/root || /dev/sda3 partition, or if the hard drive needs to be directly plugged into a system (and not via a USB device booted from), or if there are bad sectors / physical damage...

Re: LUKS Volume Query

If you plug it in via USB/the adapter now, the drive is likely not sda (& sda3) anymore. So you have to adjust the kernel parameter for the luks-partition in your bootloader. Since it booted once in the PC store incl. LUKS open, it sounds unlikely that something is damaged.

Re: LUKS Volume Query

Strike0 wrote:

If you plug it in via USB/the adapter now, the drive is likely not sda (& sda3) anymore. So you have to adjust the kernel parameter for the luks-partition in your bootloader. Since it booted once in the PC store incl. LUKS open, it sounds unlikely that something is damaged.

Yes, very thankfully correct. I found a desktop to plug the drive into and it worked fine, backed up files.But for future reference of using such "DriveWire" devices, what would it be, then, if not /dev/sda3? /dev/sdb3 even though it's being booted as "first in line" via boot load order?